Unseemly Are The Open Eyes
by skywalker05
Summary: “Face-Stealer”, said Ozai, “I have a bargain for you. Help me to regain the firebending that the Avatar has taken from me, and you may have your pick of his friends’ faces.”
1. Chapter 1

Unseemly are the open eyes  
That watch the midnight sheep,  
That look upon the secret skies  
Nor close, abashed, in sleep;

That see the dawn drag in, unbidden,  
To birth another day-  
Oh, better far their gaze were hidden  
Below the decent clay.

"Sight" by Dorothy Parker

* * *

**I**

The tea shop was everything that Iroh had hoped for and more.

_More _being a picture tacked onto the wooden wall above one of the exquisitely set tables. It depicted Momo sitting next to Appa on a...tree branch, or... something...

Iroh turned around with a puzzled expression on his face as Sokka appeared beside him, a wide grin on the boy's face.

"Like it?" Sokka asked enthusiastically. "It's Aang and a bug-dove, triumphantly standing on the wall of Ba Sing Sei. So it symbolizes peace, and, ah, the un-conquering!"

Sokka trailed off, undoubtedly distracted by the sight of Suki walking gracefully across the shop with a tray to tea.

Iroh put on his jolliest face. "It's lovely. Why don't you show this picture to Toph?" Iroh had walked quite a few steps away before Sokka got it.

**Evening **was falling, and the extended Team Avatar had gathered in the tea shop's common room for a leisurely dinner when Toph noticed that Katara and Zuko –Fire Lord Grumpy, to you--were sitting next to one another. She focused on their voices, petulance twisting a smirk across her face. She hadn't expected to feel this way, but...almost everyone had been rather _exclusive _this afternoon. Sokka and Suki. Zuko and Mai. Katara and Aang. Toph and...laughing at everyone else?

That didn't quite feel right any more.

It didn't even make all that much sense for Zuko to be here. As Fire Lord, he must have plenty of work to do. However, Toph did know all about wanting to shirk boring responsibilities...

"I'm worried about Azula," Zuko was saying in his rough, distinct voice. "She's…crazy, but...I don't think we've seen the last of her."

Katara replied, "Do you know what happened to her, to cause the breakdown? Maybe I could try to heal her."

"I don't think so. Maybe it's worth a try. But…"

Toph heard their clothes shuffle and voices recede just slightly, as Katara and Zuko turned away from her and the others, voices covering their conversation. They moved closer together, chairs scraping quietly across the floor.

Toph wasn't particularly _jealous _of anybody. But she was a little lonely, and in earthbending competitions or casual conversation, the thing that would _always _get you noticed was you making fun of someone else. She wasn't going to _hurt _anyone, just...maybe mess with things a little.

"Look," said Toph, gazing in the direction of the conspirators and making sure that everyone else could hear. "How _cute_."

**Whereas **the flame had once been a symbol of power, now, in the deepest levels of a prison, it symbolized only condemnation. Here, two one-time Fire Lords lived, never to see the sun again.

Young Fire Lord Zuko kept to the back of the group as he, Mai, Katara, and Aang confronted Azula. His thoughts were cluttered with business that the highest-ranking Fire Nation officials had lain on him as soon as his coronation; formal apologies, trade arrangements, even questions about how many people he wanted the palace's tables set for, or how he wanted his throne room decorated. He was certainly happy that the war was over, but…peace had its complexities and duties too. Never more than now was he aware of that, as, in one of the few hours he had set aside to simply relax and talk to his friends and his uncle, he headed into the darkness to confront Azula.

Her madness had not abated in the days since her capture. But, lucky for everyone concerned, she wasn't shooting gouts of blue fire any more.

Instead, she seemed to be imitating Ty Lee.

Azula's long legs were propped up against the grimy wall of her cell, and as she twitched her toes she happily patted the ground she lay on. It would have been amusing if she did not, once every few moments, spit lightning deliberately away from herself.

"What if she doesn't take to the healing?" Aang said softly from just outside the bars. "She's totally..." He swirled his fingers around his ears.

Zuko did not know whether he was sad to see his sister like this or not. The very act of calling her his sister was an effort. Whatever sort of family they had once been, he had thrown himself whole-heartily into Aang's mission, and seen Azula, ever since their first battle, as a foe. (He had seen her as a foe as a child, too, but then there had been Ursa to temper her.) Now...she barely looked human.

Katara said, "I think he's right, Aang." She lay a hand on the young airbender's shoulder. "Maybe you should take her bending away and be done with it."

Aang looked down for a moment and sighed. Tired, Zuko thought–tired like a child who had just saved the world. "You're right," Aang said. "We'll try to talk to her afterward."

It almost frightened Zuko how easily, after the final fight of the Fire Nation War, Aang could summon his Avatar powers. Even without the true Avatar State, when Aang walked into Azula's cell flanked by Zuko and Katara with their respective elements ready the airbender looked incredibly secure and confidant, his eyes bright without inhuman glow. Zuko had been told about the energybending, but had never seen it, only its results.

None of us have, he realized. We have only seen the change.

Azula's feet slid down the wall. Slowly she curled in on herself and stood.

Aang did not want to give her a moment to react. His hands found her forehead and the base of her neck. But she slipped away, surprisingly purposefully, surprisingly sane. Aang reached again and she hooked one of his feet out from under him. But Aang summoned air and righted himself, and with all the anger of a thwarted child he lunged toward Azula again.

She let him get close this time. She let him touch her, and let their skins begin to glow. But then, with a vindictive, wily smile that Zuko could see because her turning had brought her within steps of him, she batted Aang's hands away and slipped from beneath them.

The Avatar's unbalance carried him forward, as if the earth had shaken under him. It carried him directly in front of Zuko.

Zuko felt Aang's hands scrabble at his shoulders, and reached for his friend's wrists instinctively, either to help or to push away.

But as soon as they touched, the blue light flooded Zuko and swallowed his soul.

_Light pure quiet light energy reaching killing taking _paring–!

Zuko felt himself hit the floor with a bone-jarring limpness. Dimly he saw Aang's feet dance across the floor and stop a tiny distance from Azula's. Dimly he saw more blue-and-orange light illuminate the floor. Dimly he heard Azula laugh, and felt a touch on his arm. Katara?

_No_, thought Zuko. _This cannot mean that I've lost my bending too._


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

Dawn hesitated to stretch its fingers over the labyrinthine streets of Ba Sing Se. As if Sozin's comet had shaken the skies and made them wary of any sudden movements, lest all should come crashing down upon the earth, the darkness lasted a few moments too long. Merchants and farmers who timed their days by the sun took notice and murmured superstitiously to themselves and the spirits.

Prison guards at the deepest levels of the city did not take notice. They were otherwise occupied, and quite frenzied with that occupation.

The breakout had happened some hours before the suggestion of dawn.

They used bending against him at first. He had expected that.

He had spent his time remembering, planning, instead of pacing his cell and trying, over and fruitlessly over, to feel the fire just out of reach. He rehearsed in his mind the earthbending moves that he would need to react to.

When the time came, there was no bending involved at all. The Earth Nation guard, green greaves and dark skin, set Ozai's tray of food down a bit too slowly. Then his hands, were no longer his own.

The former Fire Lord had no trouble with turning the wrist lock into a chokehold.Before the guard could earthbend, he had forgotten about his feet and was concentrating entirely on the red haze that was eating his vision. His breathing pinched off.

Ozai left the guard and paced down the hallway. His daughter was not in any of the stone-and-metal cells he passed. The earthbenders and old masters had been intelligent–there was no one nearby whom Ozai could by loyalty or intimidation make an ally.

There were only guards, to be made allies by death.

Some hallways smelled like dust, like rock, like ages. Others had air flowing in them, and these he followed, to yellow sunlight, and to the earthbenders who had been preparing for him ever since his weight left the stones of his cell.

The floor shook as miniature tectonic shifts turned it into a range of head-high cliffs and shards. Ozai ducked and ran through the obstacle course of rock-tents, making for the flesh-and-blood benders behind them. Pain filled a slash across his shoulder blades. Dust and peddles fell like rain. The rock-tents decreased in size as the benders peered around their traps and saw him coming through.

The corridor was filled with dust, with the creaking of rock. Ozai caught the last, the smallest rock tent, now more like an arrow to impale him, in his hands and jumped over it. Momentum fueled a kick that broke one earthbender's nose and sent the man reeling into another. The sight of wide eyes and paled faces charged the lightning of his anger--The earthbenders scattered as Ozai neared them, but the clicking and huffing sounds that he could hear from a perpendicular corridor proved to him that they had more plans to prevent his escape. He searched the walls and found a torch, like those that were used for illumination in all the halls.

Oh how opportune, that they had thought he would not again consider fire.

He reached up to wrest the torch from its socket just as another guard appeared around the corner, behind the hissing head and riding the lurching flanks of a tall eelhound.

Purpose drove Ozai. Ever since he had had the strength only to tell the Avatar's friends that _he was still alive_, revenge had been stewing in him, wiping away thoughts of family and consequence (_what family was there now? What Fire Nation? Azula as good as dead–he had hoped the war would kill her–Zuko was taking the world into a soft era.) _Rallying a war was a far-away, challenging step. Even if Ozai did one day rally allies, those remembering the glory of the Fire Nation, those looking down on the primitive Earthbenders and Waterbenders...such plans would distract him from his true, first goals.

Retrieve his fire-power, and kill the Avatar.

Kill Aang not in a showdown, but in the night, in his sleep, by whatever means necessary. That did not matter. The inglorious defeat demanded vengeance.

_Demanded it_, because deep in himself where he did not want to tread, Ozai _knew_ that the world was tired of the Fire Nation, that they preferred to be ruled by children, that they would challenge him at every turn...but if he _accepted_ that, he would have naught to do but die.

He had not listened to his soft son's words about learning.

He had not responded to his soft son's words about Ursa.

He did not know where she had gone, when he had, like everyone else in the murderous political circles of Azulon's time, thought she was dead. He could not say why he doubted the veracity of that death, even if he had mourned her, even if he had never seen her walk away–

The eelhound in the tunnel plunged its green-gray head toward him, and he held the torch in one hand. When that stinking, toothy mouth almost brushed against his skin, he ducked beneath the creature's muscled neck and swept the torch across the creature's reins and the guard's skirts.

They never expected him to use fire this way.

The guard's clothes caught, and as the man panicked, batting at the fire with his calloused hands, Ozai found a foothold on the eelhound's shoulder, dropped the torch, grasped the guard by his lapels, and slammed the frantic man to the floor. As the guard rolled–into the torch, Ozai hoped–Ozai took the eelhound's reins. No matter how loyal the beast was—he wrestled it around by its bit.

His elbow was scorched. Pain washed through it on the wake of his heartbeats, and he had never felt anything quite like this.

The eelhound bucked and huffed, but the corridor was narrow and it had been trained to follow its rider's commands. He propelled it up a sloping hallway.

The next wave of guards were sleepy. Many were trampled. Ozai ripped another torch off the wall as it hurtled past.

He did not stop at the gates of the underground section of the prison. The eelhound barged through them, into the cool air and dim starlight. The torch arced through the air and set a thatch-roofed guard shack alight.

Predictably, the prison staff occupied themselves with being sure that anyone asleep in the guard shack was rescued from the blaze, before chasing their prisoner.

The eelhound burst through the second gate. Ozai was in the open now, in the streets of history-laden Ba Sing Se, but his mount sunk to its recurved knees, shaking its head. It must have 

been hurt by one of the gates.

No matter. Ozai knew that it was stealth that was needed now. He took to the streets and ran.

For a few moments it was like a nightmare of pursuit, twisting allies and low fences, darkness and people's unwary backyards.

Finally he found an appropriate patch of ground, in a park seeded with grass. He sat down, unexpectedly weary. He had been imprisoned for less than a week, but the difference between gruel and the rich, healthy food he had been used to had taken some toll.

But he ignored weakness as best he could, and began to chant, softly under his breath. Under the shadow of trees, quick syllables whispered into the cool darkness fell like seeds.

He hoped that they would grow a demon.

Fire Nation royalty had long held an affinity for half-magical creatures. Rare dragons were venerated by firebenders, but partially the reverse held true. And somewhere down in the press of years, a Fire Lord had taught his progeny a secret that they would pass down through the generations, a true secret, a true conspiracy unused in war because it was _too dangerous. _

Ozai feared the spell too, but not enough to stop him from calling the one being which might prove a true ally—the Face-Stealer.

An old spirit, a hungry one, hungry for emotions and flesh and a semblance of form beyond creeping centipede-legs and amphibian-sheen, Koh could be called from the spirit world if one intoned correctly. If one did not lose one's visage to him, one could ask for information. Koh, it was said, knew more about any world than any spirit.

When the final syllable sunk into the air, the ground split open.

Koh looked like a woman's mask, lying on the grass, innocent and fake.

Ozai knew the myth: to show emotion in front of Koh is to die by his claw. It did not trouble him. "Face-Stealer", said Ozai, "I have a bargain for you. Help me to regain the firebending that the Avatar has taken from me, and you may have your pick of his friends' faces."


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Much thanks to my betareader/semiroomate, wordswithout. _

III

Zuko awoke with a headache. It began as a knife-prick at the back of his neck, then curved around and dug deeper on its way to his ears. He had had a prolonged fever once when he was young, a thing of headaches and shaking limbs and shakier thoughts. This felt like that, although the weariness was slowly receding. He gathered his thoughts, remembering Azula's attempt at escape and Aang's stumble.

Whereas Ursa had been beside him when he was young, Katara was there now, seated on a stool with the view of the ocean from Zuko's temporary top-floor bedroom in the tea shop behind her. Immediately she passed a cup of water to him. He sat up on the bedroll and drank, then spoke his pressing concern.

"Azula. Did she escape?"

"No. We stopped her, after…you collapsed."

"How long have I been out? My advisors must be asking about me." It was strange to have to think about a leash of courtiers whom he would soon, as fully-fledged Fire Lord, need to consult about every move he made.

"You slept all night and a few hours. Aang and your uncle both went to address the court this morning—they should be back any time now." Katara rushed to speak her next words. "Aang says that he wasn't touching you long enough to complete the energybending at all. You should be fine."

He made to gesture, to raise flame between his fingers, but her next words gave him pause.

"Zuko, during the night…your father escaped the prison. He killed some guards, and there's no sign of him anywhere."

Zuko sighed. "Escaped."

"No one's seen him firebend, but…he's gone."

"He's still dangerous without bending." Zuko pushed light blankets away from his legs and stood up, wobbling slightly on limb that felt as sturdy as lace. "I'm fine—" But Katara caught his elbow and steadied him.

A moment later the door opened, and a hard-eyed Aang entered the room at the fore of a group: Iroh, Hakoda, Mai.

Aang rushed to Zuko's side. "It's good to see you awake."

Zuko nodded and looked at Mai, sure that she had kept closest watch at the court. "How is the escape being dealt with?"

"Badly," the girl sighed, her eyes skeptical of anyone else's competence. "No one knows where he's gone--the tracks just end, in the middle of Ba Sing Se. No politician is going to find him soon…but I don't know why we could either."

"Why not?" Aang countered. "We should go and look at where the tracks stop."

"That is not a bad idea," Iroh said. "But Zuko also needs to assure his advisors that their Fire Lord is still alive. Do you think you can do that this afternoon?"

"Of course." Zuko stepped forward a few paces and felt his equilibrium returning. Katara released his arm.

**Zuko and Mai **returned to the tea shop from the palace as the sun was going down. He felt tired, more so than he thought he should be after an afternoon of talking and as much sleeping as he had done since yesterday evening. He was rather stunned by the ease with which Mai had convinced the court that Zuko was both ready to take up his mantle of office again and that he needed a few days both to recover from the 'injury' Azula had inflicted and to confer with the Avatar about matters concerning the spiritual plane. Zuko had a feeling that the martial, stuffy, sideburn-bedecked advisors had both realized that a teenager needed some time to hang out with his friends and digest the fact that he now controlled one-third of the world, and that they wanted to be able to arrange power for themselves in the Fire Lord's absence. He was confident that Mai, who knew the court the best out of all of his friends and fellow warriors, could negotiate back anything he lost.

Which left Zuko free to do whatever he wanted. And he _wanted _to, he was _ready for_, another quest. He was angry, with the anger and drive that had once spurred him on against Aang, because all that he had his friends had worked for was for naught if Ozai gained power again—or even if he committed one more crime, hurt one more person. Zuko had no doubt that revenge would be on his father's to-do list as well…so this anger could be interpreted as self-defense.

Aang gave him another uncharacteristically serious look when Zuko entered the tea ship, skirted Toph, who was waitressing, and joined the others behind the counter and paper partition where Iroh brewed his teas.

Aang said, "Avatar Roku came to me as soon as I got near the spot where Ozai disappeared. He said that I need to go to the spirit world as soon as possible, that no one foresaw an alliance that's been made."

"I want to go with you," Katara said, sounding as if she had been trying to convince the Avatar of that for some time now. "It's too risky to go alone. What if someone gets trapped in the Spirit World again?"

Aang looked down at his hands. Zuko sat down on a stool behind the counter and met his friends' eyes.

"I've already decided," said Aang, gaze flicking between him and Katara almost nervously. "Avatar Roku said that I could bring two people with me, but any more would…tear the fabric of reality, or something. Normally people don't go into the Spirit World like this; you have to be called. But this is some important…" He sighed. "I want to take Zuko and Katara. She's…one of the best of us at traveling, and he knows Ozai."

Zuko's thoughts flicked—_Aang is far more serious and worried than normal right now—if he had really wanted someone practical he would have chosen Suki—I do not know my father._

Aang continued, "We need to leave soon."

Sokka, sitting next to Suki, said, "I thought you've said that bending doesn't work in the spirit world."

"As far as I know it doesn't," Aang replied. "Come on." He stood. "Now that Zuko's here, we can go."

"Already?" Katara said.

Aang nodded. "Avatar Roku said we need to hurry."

**As soon as **Zuko stepped out of the dissolving circle and made eye contact with Mai, she said, "You shouldn't go."

He looked at her questioningly and moved with her to a shaded spot by the wall. He felt unsettled by Aang's uncharacteristic seriousness and haste. He almost reminded Zuko of himself. But Zuko could understand that Aang was upset by the near-unraveling of his tapestry of success against Ozai.

Zuko had something else to worry about as well—he had not had time to test his bending.

Worry propelled him to be snappish at Mai. "And why not?"

"The Fire Nation needs help. We're recovering from a world war, Zuko," she drawled.

"And the Avatar needs help. You can keep the court happy better than I can anyway. You're better at intrigue."

She sighed. "You can't abandon your duties to go off journey with your friends anymore."

His fists wanted to clench. "I can. Without the Avatar, I wouldn't be Fire Lord. I own him, for all that time I chased him too."

Again a sigh. "If you must. But I wish you felt like you owned me for all the time you were away." She walked away, and he did not know what to say to bring her back.

Zuko stormed out of the room's rear door and into the balcony. He tried to draw the clear air in, and mimic the peace of the beginning sunset. Brine-scent cleared his senses. Not wanting to disappoint people was such a _burden_.

He steadied his thoughts and turned to face the length of the balcony. He slid one foot forward and pushed one hand out in the gesture for the simplest firebending technique.

The air inches from his fist pulled in on itself and burst into orange flame. The _whump _of consumed oxygen was the proverbial music to his ears. But the fireball had no momentum; it fell and dissipated into worms of yellow that crawled threateningly along the wood slats on which he stood until he crushed the flamelets under foot.

From behind him, Aang said, "I'm sorry."

Zuko did not turn. "I'm fine. I just need to train."

Aang came closer. "I didn't touch your spirit long enough to take your bending. I know I didn't."

The firebender shook his head. That was obvious. But he still felt limited, like a flame without fuel. Would practice really reverse the change?

Aang said, "Avatar Roku told me that I should have killed Ozai in the first place. I feel like maybe I made a wrong decision. So I need to finish this."

Zuko understood what Aang was not saying. _I need to decide whether or not to kill him again, and I don't think a lionturtle is going to come make my decision for me this time. _"What's our destination?"

"Avatar Roku said Appa would know. Avatars' animals…know things, especially after the Avatar learns about himself…"

Aang walked out through Zuko's field of vision, toward the edge of the balcony, and a moment later Katara followed him with a pack slung over her shoulder. Aang whistled, and the wind whipped in response as Appa soared from his lot beside the teahouse into the air and nudged up against the balcony, his heavy head wagging as if he were tired of adventures.

"I'm ready to go," Katara said. "Everyone's said their goodbyes?"

Zuko thought of Mai, of Iroh, of the comfortably lit and solid room just steps away.

He said, "We'll be back," and climbed onto Appa's side behind Aang.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Thanks this chapter goes to __**Princess Azula**__, who when she wrote in a review "Beautifully written. I'm creeped out now." described exactly the reaction I want most of my writing to produce._

**IV **

The spirit world looked like a war had raged through it. Pungent smalls rose from water-filled gashes in the murky ground. The insect-spirit Koh curved around Ozai like a mobile mountain range, like the great trains that drove the Fire Nation's vehicles of war, before forging on ahead, serrated legs clicking.

Ozai pulled at the loose collar of the rust-colored cloak he had been given in the prison; the air was cold. This was no eyrie of dragons…but nor was it a cell. He would endure whatever debasement was required to regain his glory.

He stepped along beside the moving length of the monster, and then growled, "How does this help me, Face-Stealer?"

Faster than an eyeblink, Koh's head and shoulder-sections turned and loomed up before him. The face was a plain of furrowed tan skin and black hair. Like Iroh's son? Maybe. Ozai carefully froze his expression before he could react to either surprise.

"First you must help _me_," the face said. "The Avatar knows of our meeting."

"How do you know that?" Ozai made sure to keep his voice even.

"The Spirit world ripples like a pool of water, for those who can see its surface.

We will defeat him together. Then I will explain to you our bargain."

**Appa sped through **the sky. To Aang's sight, the dragon appeared beside him almost immediately, its whiskers streaming back along its streamlined head. It twined around Appa in wide loops. The thick belly-scales crossed Aang's vision, and when he saw the sky again, it was not the sky of his world any more.

It was tainted with mauve, and fallen trees littered the ground below like broken sticks cast among the still-living trees. Appa flew on.

**Sensation shivered through **Zuko, something wild and strong and strange. _Power_, as sure as a clenched fist. Then a vision stole his sight, replacing the striking sky with a narrow alley at dusk, stars visible as just a rectangle above the high walls of buildings to either side. 

A woman walked across the cobbled stones, wearing a rough, loose, grey cloak and curled-toed slippers inappropriate for the dusty, puddle-strewn street. Zuko would have recognized her as his mother by an unknown sixth sense, he was sure, even without her pale hand moving as she shed a golden bracelet that he recognized as a gift from his father; even without her furtive looks backwards, revealing the curve of cheek and fall of onyx hair, Zuko would have sensed the mien of a queen fleeing a murder she committed and half-regrets.

For a moment, temperatureless air forced itself into Zuko's throat, but screaming into the past would do nothing, and so the gasp brought him again into the present, to Appa and to his companions.

Aang, cross-legged in his customary place, did not stir. Katara, her hair rustling in the wind, concentrated on the sky. All were uncertain of what this world was, of whether it had changed since their world had. No one seemed to have shared Zuko's vision, and so he considered it in silence.

Finally, Katara asked, "Where exactly are we going?"

"We'll know when we get there," Aang replied, his voice flat, then sounding more cheerful. "Or else we'll just fly around forever."

This did not seem to be the time for gallows humor, and so neither Katara nor Zuko responded.

Aang continued, "The spirit world is big. I've been to all different parts of it before, and I can't really see how_ this_ part is connected to any of them…" but his voice trailed off, because a clearing came into view below them, and in it curled a creature like a giant insect. It twitched and shivered as its legs moved in clusters of spikes, and within the half-circle of its body stood the figure of a man.

Aang murmured, "The Face-Stealer."

"The what?" Katara lay her fingers against her cheeks nervously.

"One of the scariest spirits I've ever met," Aang said. "He…ah…" he waved his hands, trying to search for words. "Takes your face."

Zuko glared down at the creature, trying to judge its weaknesses, if physical weapons could hurt it at all, trying to avoid looking at the human it had entrapped or allied with. Who knew what the rules of the spirit world were…if there were any. "Is that something someone can survive?"

"I'm not sure…" Aang replied.

Appa curved over the clearing. Katara's thoughts seemed to match Zuko's as she looked down. She murmured, "How did heget here?" It would have been foolish to ask her who she met. Of course she could recognize his father.

Aang said, "He would need a spirit guide," but Zuko had a better answer.

"Remember, every nation has animal guides. Air Nomads had sky bison; the Fire Nation had dragons. But there were others too. A long time ago there was a man whose entire purpose at the court was to study the animals that had to do with firebending or our history. What was his name…Li Zhing…no, Zhing Shu. He wrote some about the Face-Stealer." _And it was something I hoped was a myth. _"We managed to ally with the Face-Stealer once, but when he was asked to help us in war, he refused. But it seems that the spells to summon him are still known…by some, anyway."

"Apparently." said Katara. " We can't use bending here, right? Well, we're not entirely defenseless. Zuko, you have your swords."

He had packed them soon after Aang mentioned that bending did not work in the spirit world. He touched the hilt of one of the two. "Yeah."

But sour fear burrowed from his thoughts to his heart as he wondered if he could still firebend properly at all.

"All right." Aang said. "We'll confront them." He looked so serious that Zuko did not want to ask how he was going to defend himself physically. While Aang had proved himself hale often enough, his fighting style was not as similar to a purely physical martial art as Zuko's was to afford him much good without elemental powers, but the Avatar produced an aegis of confidence. "But I don't want Ozai killed."

_No_, thought Zuko, _we don't want to have to make that decision again, but we don't exactly want it taken out of our hands, either. Even without bending, he could still kill one of us easilly._

_I haven't really thought of him as my father in so long._

Aang guided Appa down and through the trees. The sky bison landed on the saturated ground and lowed fitfully; Aang patted the thick fur over his eyes before sliding to the ground. Zuko followed him. They strode toward the clearing containing the monsters, tense and hard-eyed.

**Ozai heard the **shush of footsteps and broke his stare with Koh. He heard the great worm blink, switching visages. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the brightly striped face of a baboon, its eyes unsettlingly piercing.

Ozai could not stop a wide grin when he saw the children walking so determinedly before him, propelled as they were by their naïve sense that destiny favored the upstarts. Defensiveness and arrogance fed his confidence. "The Avatar is mine, Koh," He hissed, and then he turned and spoke louder. "Welcome!"

_And Zuko there, who so conveniently took Azula out of the picture once she was too crazed, too drunk with power to defend herself from her weaker sibling. _Would Zuko be useful any more, now that he wanted nothing more from Ozai? No. He was just another child who thought it could take its world from its parents.

"Be patient." Koh's androgynous voice came from just behind Ozai.

"Silence!" Piqued by the creature's refusal to serve him as he had called it to do, he turned for a moment to look at the spirit. "You are here only to do as I command."

The baboon-face did not respond. Ozai rued how obvious it would be to his foes that he and Koh were not on the friendliest of terms.

But no matter. Even if they lacked solidarity, they far outclassed the children in power.

They must. Ozai would not suffer defeat again.


	5. Chapter 5

**V**

Zuko, Aang, and Katara warily spread out over the spongy ground. "Show no expression," Zuko murmured to them, remembering another facet of the legend of the Face-Stealer, and he forced himself to relax the suddenly so-noticeable muscles of his face.

_It felt a little like this at court, and was the stillness not out of fear then?_

He could see a wildness in Ozai's eyes, a quiet whimpering mourning for lost sanity. But it was engulfed by conflagration as the former Fire Lord's thin lips twisted into a mocking smile as he watched his foes.

Then he crouched, one knee on the ground, and looked about. Zuko realized that Ozai had accepted the loss of his bending powers, had in a way devolved because of that acceptance—Ozai picked up a black, moss-curtained stone and raised it as if to throw, and Zuko made sure to move before he did.

He surged forward, throwing himself into a spinning kick that lashed hard against Ozai's forearm and loosened his hold on the rock. Zuko caught a glimpse of Ozai's expression transforming in a heartbeat from feral scowl to a limper sadness that Zuko _knew _was a ruse; Ozai's wits were not gone, for he knew pretending to be hurt—emotionally—by such a direct attack by his son might pain Zuko more than war had, might cause him to hesitate. But Zuko had suffered too much at the hands of his father to believe in pity. Not after the Agni Kai and the worthless acceptance.

But purposeful or not, the expression had been merely a distraction—Koh reared up from behind Zuko, and a curtain of black spine-legs fell down between him and Ozai. Zuko was dragged backwards, breath forced from him.

He struggled to free his scimitars from their sheaths, but he was three times his own length away from Ozai now, smothered by the insect-monster's legs and pale, putrescent belly. He pulled one sword free and sliced through the air, severing three of Koh's pincer-legs. Koh drew away, but a heartbeat later Zuko was staring at a white mask that pushed itself into his field of vision before he could move.

He froze.

But the mask that was Koh's visage gave a small smile, and Zuko was struck with a powerful, terrifying, body-wracking urge to _laugh_…

**Ozai threw the **rock. It glanced off of Aang's left shoulder, forcing him backward. The Avatar tried to summon air to catch himself on, like he had since perhaps before he could walk, but it did not come. He stumbled, then caught his ankle on the rock. In the next moment, Ozai was closer, punching toward him, first with flailing, desperate attacks that Aang narrowly avoided. Then the strikes became more precise—Aang was hit on the face, on the body. Ozai was wordless and screaming, his tangled hair an umbra.

Through his blurred vision, Aang saw a streak of blue hurtle toward Ozai. He turned his head (when had he fallen to the ground? The dirt was cold against his cheek) to see Katara standing a few meters away, anger etched into her strong stance, hand extended from when she had thrown the traditional Water Tribe hunting boomerang—she shouted something, perhaps "Thanks, Sokka—"

But Ozai _caught _the boomerang, with a dull sound as it smacked into his palm, and tossed it away onto the ground.

Over Ozai's shoulder, Aang could see Zuko disappearing behind a curve of Koh.

**Zuko felt Koh's** coils tighten around him. The young firebender felt that his own expression must be very strange—mouth closed tight, eyes wide, utterly _still._

How was he to fight against something for whom the passion of fighting was itself a weapon?  
But whatever sensation precluding death Zuko was expecting, it did not come. Koh's soft, genderless voice wheedled, "You are not destined to be my first victim today."

**Weak **_**child**_**, Ozai **thought, _you are nothing without the lineage of Avatars. Let the world see what it has rested its hopes on. _

He hit Aang again, and the boy could do nothing but slump against the boulder that had begun his downfall. Ozai laughed softly as Aang pushed himself away from the stone and his attacker.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and Ozai turned to look at Zuko, who would most likely pose a much greater challenge on the martial front than the Avatar had. For some reason, Koh had let the boy go and slunk away into the dimness of the trees, leaving Zuko standing crouched with one sword drawn. Ozai left the motionless Aang and stalked toward his son, and Zuko shuffled backwards.

Ozai picked up from the ground one of the spine-legs that Koh had lost; bloodless it weighed like a saber in his hand.

He stabbed forward with the makeshift blade, and Zuko moved his scimitar to parry. But Ozai circled the weapon with his own and stabbed into toward Zuko's chest. At the last moment he dropped the spike (it would do no good as a weapon—he already knew that the scimitar could cut it) and instead wrapped his hand around Zuko's wrist and squeezed, fingers scrabbling for pressure points. The scimitar dropped to the ground. Zuko backpedaled and reached for his second blade while Ozai, grinning slyly, retrieved his from the ground.

"Foolish boy—" Ozai sliced out with the leg-spine, nearly nicking Zuko's shoulder even as the scimitar cut a neat triangle out of his makeshift weapon. Zuko dodged, trying to get around to Ozai's back, but succeeded only in switching where they had been standing, so that Ozai could see Aang getting slowly to his feet on the other side of the clearing and Katara helping him up.

Suddenly, Koh (how did the thing move so fast, Ozai wondered in a flash, with its one thousand legs and fleshy body?) appeared in front of him. Zuko closed his eyes and stumbled away as he saw the green-black lid close over the spirit's mask-face.

When the lid opened again, Ozai was caught in its gaze. Ursa's face looked out at him, eyes blank (still so kind and beautiful, but like a bony winter doe, nearly defenseless and repugnant in that defenselessness), only Koh's endless shoulders rising behind it.

He forgot the present, then, and remembered as if it were happening now the evening after Azulon's death, when the filial blood on his hands (metaphorical blood, but still so crimson) was transferred to her back as he pushed her out into the streets of the capitol. She pulled a shawl over her head and turned for a moment to look back at him, but he was too focused on burning their guilt and reaping its rewards. He turned over in his mind how profitable the death of a family member could be, and something in his expression (or lack thereof) frightened her away.

He thought that he saw her a few times afterward, watching their children from a distance and from beneath a cowl, but eventually the visits stopped all together, and she never approached him (no matter how much he missed her).

And now she was _here, _suspended by Koh, her face beautiful in its blankness, and he felt himself gasp.

Ursa's pink lips curled in a smirk far too disdainful for her, and then Koh blinked again, swallowing her visage, and opened again on nothingness.

Ozai felt himself drawn in, surrounded by memories that he could not tell were not his own—the cold humidity of the swamp, the acrid not-taste of a baboon's soul, a formless power (_this is what it's like to be a spirit-_-) then even more _nothingness--_

**Zuko saw Ozai **collapse, and steeled himself for Koh's stolen gaze. But it was his mother's face that turned to him, raven hair swinging, and for a moment Zuko was stunned, lost in emotions, lips threatening to twitch.

Koh's impatience saved him. The multilayered voice echoing from behind the mask of Ursa shocked him into remembering the necessary stillness of face. "Come, boy, I am your family now."

But Zuko was struck with coldness, with an anger entirely unlike the livid one he was used to, the one which accepted that he was without a doubt a son and conduit of fire—this one accepted his loss of the element, and so delved to other resources, ones without emotional import. He remembered the words he spoke to Aang before--_A long time ago there was a man whose entire purpose at the court was to study the animals that had to do with firebending or our history_.

That scholar had done more than fail to bind Koh to the humans. His literature had pervaded Fire Nation culture. Even nursery rhymes remembered him—"Phoenix", children sang in cobbled courtyards, "fly high, burn bright, make day from night, burn bright." The song had come from a bestiary written by the scholar, and now Zuko felt power flow around the words like lava as they languidly surfaced in his thoughts, seeming as real as the air he was breathing, irrational, _essential_.

Perhaps fear could be used like a sword, or perhaps Agni or another spirit was with him. But whatever the source, he spoke the words emotionlessly, singing the nursery rhyme then linking it to other songs the scholar recorded that Zuko did not realize he remembered, vocalizing the names of beasts and spirits, the tens of words for different types of fire that his culture had created over its long history. And from beside him he heard the crackle of flames.


	6. Chapter 6

**VI**

Channeling the Phoenix was not like entering the Avatar State. Words failed Aang, although sensations—transitions fast or slow, hot or cold, virulent or serene—passed through him quickly like gusts in a snowstorm.

But no—the Phoenix was not as mutable as any spirit Aang had ever met before. In its fully manifested state, it demanded the presence of no metaphors save fire.

All forge-claws and flame-breath and smolder-eyes it billowed through him. Ironic, he thought, that Zuko and I would both be here, to unify fire-magic and Avatar-magic and truly _stop the war—_

Except that it wasn't Ozai the war-bringer they needed to fight now—it was Koh, who had snaked his way back into the shadows. Aang felt his consciousness tear free of the Phoenix's, and he saw the bird-spirit stand up (it was built like an ostrich, as stable on the ground as the massive, graceful wingspan proved it to be in the air) and stalk a few paces, its eyes ( wreathed in orange flame) darting about as it stared into the dark, vine-decked forest. Aang backtracked, suddenly feeling the wash of hot air on his face.

He retreated to within a hand's breadth of Katara. He saw Zuko standing stunned in the middle of the clearing, looking down at Ozai's limp form (the prison robes pooled around him as if the confinement had melted away any powerful poise he had once). But a moment later, Zuko joined the Avatar. His eyes were dark and deep, and Aang could see the shock that seeing Ursa had been reflected in them, burned there as if from the flash of a camera.

The phoenix picked its way through the trees, staring about, and a moment later Aang saw Koh appear, a pile of tangles, darting up toward the phoenix's face like a snake underfoot. His face was the white players' mask, and its deadly gaze seemed to sweep the phoenix—

But the phoenix had no eyes, only differentiated pools of fire.

It snapped at Koh, and for a moment the scene exactly replicated one from nature, a bird plucking a snake from the ground, if only the bird had been _burning _and taller than three men standing on each other's shoulders, and the snake had _screamed _with ten human voices—

Koh crashed to the ground. Katara, Zuko, and Aang took shelter around and on the roots of a giant-gray barked tree as the phoenix dipped its titanic beak to pin Koh down—

A blur out of the corner of his eye, and Aang saw Zuko dart forward. The airbender threw out his hand and caught Zuko on the shoulder, but realized only then how much more muscular the older boy was. Zuko easily got his arm out of Aang's grip, but turned to face him, balanced on two wave-shaped roots.

Aang's "Wait!" died on his lips.

"It killed my parents. It's distracted—" Zuko reached up to pluck a scimitar from its sheath, tension visible in the whitening sinews of his hands.

"Don't kill a spirit out of revenge. It's part of our world. Killing spirits is no good thing—"

"Even ones like Koh?"

Katara said, "I don't think we're going to have to worry about it."

The Face-Stealer slithered around slashing talons and darting beak. The vicious-looking curl of fire-licked horn struck the ground with a dull _thoc _just behind Koh's fleeing form. Koh was swallowed up in the gray-green darkness, and the phoenix stalked after it, a sentinel rather than a soldier now. Katara breathed a sigh of relief, and Aang felt a muscle in his chest slacken, one that had been holding his breathing tight to him like an embrace—but then he realized what direction the creatures had gone in.

"Oh no—Appa!" Immediately he leapt from root to root down to the ground, Zuko scrambling after him on the heels of his former momentum. Aang rushed through the trees and soggy water to the white form of Appa, floating like a cloud in the mist—

Unharmed, with the phoenix standing beside him like a living watchtower. Koh was nowhere to be seen. As the trio approached Appa, who appeared surprisingly calm in the presence of the great bird, the phoenix looked over its shoulder. A glare seemed to run from the dramatic ridges of its brown through its conflagrating eyespots to the promise of death by its beak. But then an almost amused expression came over its severe visage, and then it faded away into nothingness, replaced gradually by the uneven ranks of trees.

They stood there for a moment in reverence, the three of them, even the almost-woman of water in this land of fire and putrescence, then climbed Appa's sides and flew away.

**Koh was not **dead. The Phoenix had known, as Aang did, how essential even angry, bitter spirits were.

The Face-Stealer lay in a cave—not his clean and pleasant throne-room-tree, but a soggy one, with cold seeping into his stomach. He would bide his time here for a moment, for an eyeblink of time. It might be years for humans, but time was a different thing to spirits.

And within the vast conglomeration of faces and minds that made up most of what Koh was, that allowed him in his own way to understand the workings of time and the minds of humans, a change like a bird's cry through the forest made itself known.

A whisper of Ozai still remained.

Content for now, because the essence of Ursa surrounded him. But he felt in the elasticity of time that he would come to know that he had only a shadow of her, as he was only a shadow of himself, that Koh had taken from him more than ever he could retrieve, and yet that any anger he kindled would only serve his host/home/captor further…

**Embraces and tea**, lots of hot-and-sweet tea delivered by Iroh's hands, were passed around to the three when they returned to the land of men. Conversation and friendship warmed Aang, even though glimmers of unease still rose like marshlights in his thoughts. He had not seen the end of Koh, of that he was certain. But now was not the time for that. Now was the time for enjoying himself—and so he lost himself in pleasantries.

Sokka would have usually been the loudest one at the party, but he was oddly quiet, doodling in the corner.

Finally Katara called over to him from the table where the others sat. "Sokka! What are you doing?"

He sauntered over to the table with a scroll rolled up in one hand and a smile on his face, as proud of himself as a cat with a mouse. "Nothing really," he drawled. "Just illustrating. I overheard Aang's story about the phoenix, and decided to set it down on paper." He began to unfold the scroll. "Just so we can remember its awesomeness for future generations."

Far too dramatically, he unfolded the scroll, revealing a stick-figure-and-daub work of surprising fluorescence, which Aang vaguely recognized as portraying the Phoenix shooting gouts of fire at a cowering Koh.

_Fin. _


End file.
